A media player may output moving images to a display device. For example, a media player might retrieve locally stored image information or receive a stream of image information from a media server (e.g., a content provider might transmit a stream that includes high-definition image frames to a television, a set-top box, or a digital video recorder through a cable or satellite network). In some cases, the image information is encoded to reduce the amount of data used to represent the image. For example, an image might be divided into smaller image portions, such as macroblocks, so that information encoded with respect to one image portion does not need to be repeated with respect to another image portion (e.g., because neighboring image portions may frequently have similar color and brightness characteristics).
As a result, the media player may decode encoded image information before it is presented via the display device. During such a processes, a video processing system in the media player may need to access information stored in a memory unit (e.g., to retrieve information associated with a particular macroblock). Thus improving the bandwidth and/or processing associated with these types of memory access may improve the performance of the media player.